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Msw media. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. Today, the government added a third charge in Trump's fourth failed attempt to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump's $1,776 bonus to members of the military comes from their already approved basic housing allowance. The parties delivered closing arguments in the case against Judge Hannah Dugan today. Attorney General Pam Bondi wants a bounty on people who support trans rights. I guess that means me, too. Republican redistricting in North Carolina could backfire in the midterms. I'll give you that information. House Democr More photos from Epstein's estate. And speaking of Alan Dershowitz, he told Trump he might be able to run for a third term. Trump is going to rename the Kennedy center to include his name and Happy Epstein Files day. To all who celebrate, I'm Alison Gill. Hey, everybody. Dana's still out. She's going to be out for about a week. So thank you again for hanging in with me solo. It's not completely solo, though, because later in the show I'm going to be talking to John Fugelsang because it's Fuglsang Fridays here on the Daily Beans. Also, the jury is now deliberating in a government's case against Judge Hannah Dugan. She's the Milwaukee judge that they accused of obstructing ICE's efforts to arrest a guy named Flores Ruiz when she instructed him to go out a door 10ft from the main courtroom door rather than the main courtroom door, even though he walked right past a couple of agents sitting right there who didn't do anything. But that is happening. The jury is deliberating. And I'll be keeping my eye on the Internet and the wire and All Rise News, specifically, Adam Klassfeld reporting. I'm going to keep my eye on that for updates as we go through the show today. And I'll check back here and there to see if we've got any updates. They've been deliberating for about three hours. They've returned two notes. And as we sit here recording, the judge is deliberating on the second note. So I'm going to continue coverage and tell you about those notes over on the Beans Talk video podcast, which I record right after this one. So be sure to check out Beans Talk if you haven't yet. Unless you really, really can't stand, like, looking at our faces, that's totally fine. But I'm really proud of it and I know Dana's proud of it too. And you can get it for free over on the MSW Media YouTube channel. All right, everybody, it's time for the news. Let's hit the Hot Notes. Hot notes, everybody. It's Epstein files day, December 19th, which is the deadline for Pam Bondi to release the Epstein files. And I'm going to be going over what she does or doesn't do on the Midas Touch network this Sunday, noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern. My bet is she'll illegally withhold a lot of it. So we'll see. Again, I'm going to go over that on the Midas Touch this Sunday, but CNN reported Thursday that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released more photos from Jeffrey Epstein's estate on Thursday. That's the latest in a series of intermittent disclosures that have fueled significant political intrigue in recent weeks about who may have been associated with the convicted sex offender. The photographs, released without additional context by members of the panel, include a Ukrainian passport with a female notation philosopher Noam Chomsky on a plane with Epstein Bill Gates posing for a photograph with a woman whose face is redacted by the Democrats on the panel. The images also include a screenshot of a snippet of text messages in a conversation in which a person is discussing sending girls, quote, I don't know, try to send someone else. I have a friend, Scout, she sent me some girls today, but she asks $1,000 per. I will send you girls now. Maybe someone will be good for j the series of messages, that's what it reads, and the individual that sent the detailed Description, including name, 18 year old, height, measurements, weight, a note on the Shenzhen area of the departure city. Many of the details are redacted, though the age, a check mark next to Shenzhen in Russia are all visible now. There's no context provided around the conversation. It's unclear who the participants in the text message exchange are. Another photograph shows a woman's foot with a quote from Lolita, the Vladimir Nabokov novel about a man's sexual obsession with a 12 year old girl, written on it and the novel can be seen in the background. The Democrats initially released five images, but then made more than 50 public later on Thursday. Democrats noted the estate did not provide any context about the images shared with the committee and said they have publicized them as they were received. Aside from the redactions, Democrats have chosen which photos to release since the panel received more than 95,000 images from the estate last week that lawmakers are still combing through. And in today's attempt to distract us from the Epstein files. The Washington Post reports the board of the John F. Kennedy center for Performing Arts has voted to rename the storied arts institution the Trump Kennedy Center. That's according to White House press Secretary Caroline Levitt on Twitter Thursday afternoon. She said the vote was unanimous. It wasn't. The Kennedy center confirmed the vote in an email to the Washington Post. It was unclear whether such a change is legal. Well, let me help you out. The Washington Post it is illegal. The name is required by law in a law, but I doubt that it'll stop Donald Trump from giant gold letters that spell his name on the building. Law hasn't stopped him before, but it is illegal. The, the name is there by statute. So that's, you know, just so you know. Again, I don't think that, I don't think he cares what's illegal or what the law says, even though he is required to faithfully execute the laws. Next up from the Wall Street Journal, Trump on Tuesday received and discussed a draft copy of a book by Alan Dershowitz that studies whether Trump could constitutionally serve a third term as commander in chief, according to the veteran legal advisor. In an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal, Dershowitz said he told Trump the Constitution isn't clear on the issue. Wow. In a meeting in the Oval Office, Dershowitz handed Trump a draft of the book titled Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term? He wrote a whole fucking book on this. It's set to be published next year. Dershowitz said the book lays out a host of scenarios in which an individual could serve a third term. Dershowitz said Trump told him that he planned to read the book and asked him about his conclusions on serving a third term. The Constitution bars anyone from being elected to the White House more than twice. I said it's not clear if a president can become a third term president and it's not clear if it's permissible. That's what Dershowitz said, who previously served as a defense lawyer for the president during his first term when he was impeached the one time he was impeached twice. The president, according to Dershowitz, smiled and went on to other issues after the two discussed the focus of the book. Quote, he found it interesting as an intellectual issue. He said, do I think he's going to run for a third term? No, I don't think he'll run for a third term. Yeah, me neither, Alan. I think he'll just try to hold onto the White House without running now. Trump told reporters in October. The Constitution says it's pretty clear that he's not allowed to run, but he says a lot of things. Next up from Defense One President Trump and his $1,776 checks for more than a million troops announced Wednesday come from congressionally allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members. That's according to a senior administration official. During a primetime TV address, Trump said he was proud to announce that 1.45 million military service members will receive a special warrior dividend before Christmas. He added that to honor the nation's founding, we're sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that, and the checks are already on the way. A warrior dividend. The senior administration official told Defense one in an emailed statement late Wednesday that Defense Secretary Pete Kegseth directed the Pentagon to disperse the $2.6 billion as a one time basic allowance for housing supplements to all eligible service members ranked.06 and below. Quote, Congress appropriated $2.9 billion to the Department of War to supplement the basic allowance for housing entitlement with the one big beautiful bill. That's what the senior official said. Approximately 1.28 million active component military members and 174,000 reserve component military members will receive this supplement. It was appropriated from the basic housing allowance that they were going to get anyway. It's just Trump wants to send it in one fat check and put his name on it. So stupid. Next up from the Advocate Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed the FBI to create a cash reward system for information leading to the arrest of leaders of domestic terrorist organizations, a category the Justice Department now says includes people in groups associated with what it calls radical gender ideology. That's according to a December 4th memorandum. The guidance operationalizes National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, issued by Trump in September by ordering federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to prioritize investigations and prosecutions tied to an expansive definition of domestic terrorism. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein first reported on the memo's existence on Tuesday after it was leaked. Among the ideologies flagged are, quote, adherence to radical gender ideology, along with positions favoring mass migration, anti capitalism, anti Christianity and hostility toward traditional views on family, religion and morality. While the directive does not explicitly name transgender people, advocates say the language effectively targets trans communities and those who support them. Given the administration's repeated use of gender ideology as a catch all for transgender identity, healthcare, education and civil rights advocacy. Quote, for some culpable actors, such as certain antifa aligned extremists Their animating principle is adhering to the types of extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology and anti American sentiment listed below, with a willingness to use violence against law abiding citizenry to serve those beliefs. That's what the memo says. The memo instructs prosecutors to consider a broad range of criminal statutes, including obstruction during civil disorders, conspiracy against rights, and providing material support for terrorism when pursuing cases connected to protests or advocacy linked to the newly defined threats. That bit about providing material support for terrorism is illegal to charge that unless you're providing material support for foreign terrorists. Now, Bondi's guidance also orders federal agencies to comb their files for intelligence related to antifa and antifa aligned groups and deliver that information to the FBI within two weeks. Within 30 days, the FBI is directed to compile a list of organizations whose actions may constitute domestic terrorism, issue intelligence bulletins on those groups and their structures and funding, and more prominently, publicize its domestic terrorism tip line, which I'm sure will flood for good trouble. More controversially, the memo directs the FBI to establish a cash reward system, a bounty for tips that lead to the identification and arrest of leaders of targeted organizations. Paired with the memo's ideological framing, the policy risk encouraging informants to report on peaceful activists, LGBTQ organizations or healthcare providers based on politics rather than evidence of violence. Quote, the FBI shall establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the successful identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations that conspire with others to commit violations of the provisions of law listed in section 2 of this guidance or other offenses against the United States. Basically, what this is is it's a snitch letter. Snitch on your fellow Americans that are Democrats for all intents and purposes. Notably absent from the memo is any acknowledgment of the overwhelming body of research showing that the majority of domestic terrorist violence in the United States is linked to right wing extremism. That is the number one terror threat to the United States right now. White nationalism, right wing extremism. That's what ICE should be focused on because that's their charge. That's why they were created. That's why the Department of Homeland Security was created. So unless the Department of Homeland Security is going after right wing extremism and white supremacist domestic violent organizations, they should be disbanded. That's what I think. Next up from Politico. Federal prosecutors attempted to get a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia and to add a third felony charge to a failed indictment of New York attorney general Letitia James last week, while omitting earlier claims that she fraudulently converted a second home into rental property. So they figured they couldn't get the second home thing, so they're going on a third lying on documents thing. This third proposed charge, which hasn't been previously reported, was an additional count of making a false statement to a financial institution. The earlier indictment against James consisted of one such false statement count and one count of bank fraud. The additional charge in the failed indictment attempt could have exposed Tish James to more prison time because each count carries a potential penalty of 30 years in prison and a fine up to a million dollars. However, defendants are typically sentenced way under federal guidelines that result in sentences well below the maximum, especially those without prior criminal records. Prosecutors also asked a magistrate judge to keep records of the proposed indictment sealed and because they're embarrassed after grand jurors rejected all three alleged charges. But the judge declined that request. U.S. magistrate Judge William Porter wrote in an order on Monday that the Alexandria grand jury presented the rejected indictment, known as a no true bill, in open court. He added that the facts about the proceeding also leaked to news outlets and that Justice Department lawyers failed to move to seal the documents until the day after they were filed in the court's public docket. The court will not speculate why the grand jury disclosed the no bill in open court. That's what he wrote, the judge saying public disclosure serves the interest of transparency given the criminal allegations against James are already well publicized and the decision not to indict was publicly reported even before the foreperson appeared before the judge. Prosecutors had argued that sealing the court records, including the proposed indictment, would further the policies behind grand jury secrecy, protecting the grand jurors identities and the individual accused of a crime from the expense of standing trial where there was no probability of guilt. A Porter did not grant the prosecutor's request to pause his Monday ruling unsealing the documents so that the government would have time to appeal to a district court. But there's no indication in the case records that prosecutors have done so. So we'll keep an eye on that. Can't wait to see that. And from CBS North Carolina Republicans redrew the state's congressional maps this past fall in hopes of improving their chances at ousting a Democrat in one of the country's most competitive districts. In doing so, they may have created a window for a Democrat to make what has been a reliably Republican neighboring seat more competitive. This is, I think, what happened in Texas. I think this is what happened in a lot of recent elections that we've seen trying to gerrymander to make one Republican district more Republican makes the neighboring district less Republican. Now CBS News has learned that Allison Jaslo, an Iraq War veteran, plans to file Thursday for North Carolina's 3rd congressional district seat. The race in the south could become a key contest in Democrats quest to win back a majority next fall in the US House. Quote, I'm running for Congress because the people of North Carolina's 3rd congressional district deserve someone who will show up and fight for them. That's what she said in a campaign statement. Republican Representative Greg Murphy has held the seat since 2019 in a special election and won another term in 2024 with more than 77% of the vote. But the physician's political future became a bit more muddled this fall after Republican legislators in Raleigh changed the boundaries of his seat in an attempt to make The Democratic held 1st congressional district more favorable to Republicans. In part, the new map transferred a large swath of the eastern portion of Murphy's third Congressional District to the first District, which is held by Democrat Rep. Don Davis. Republican leaders made the move as similar efforts played out around the country to try to protect the party's narrow majority in the House. Murphy announced afterward he would run for another term in Congress and was soon endorsed by President Trump. While the first and third Districts are both viewed as Republican leaning areas, the impact brought about by redistricting isn't without political risk for Republicans. Murphy's district is now 43% Democratic, up from 39% before it was redrawn. Davis's seat went from being 48 to 44 Democratic, according to a CBS News analysis of the 2024 presidential election data. So they're playing with, you know, four points here on both the sides and we're winning elections by 16, 13, 18, 23 points. So swings, not winning by, but those are the swings, quote Greg knows the wisdom and courage required to defend our country, to support our brave military veterans and ensure peace through strength. That's what Trump said in an October social media post. Hefty political spending is already expected to head to the state for the next year's midterms, where former Democratic governor Roy Cooper represents his party's best chance at winning back the GOP held seat in the Senate. To have a reasonable shot at defeating Murphy, Democrats will likely need plenty to break their way, along with the typical political gravity of an incumbent president's party struggling in the midterms. All right, everybody, those are the hot notes we'll be Right back with John Fugelsang for Feegelsang Fridays followed by the good news. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages.